Pearl Harbor
April 18, 2010 at 9:45 pm 4 comments
On Friday, we went to Pearl Harbor. Some areas of the water have a thin film of oil floating on the top, and when light hits the thin film, a rainbow can be seen on top of the water. At the air-oil interface, the light reflects and undergoes a 180 degree phase change. At the oil-water interface, light that has refracted reflects with no phase change. The phase differences due to the differences in path length of the light results in constructive and destructive interference. Variations in the thickness of the film also affect the light interference.
There were random splotches of color in the water ~ It looked something like this:
My camera wasn’t working too well that day…
Different colors appear because the light that hits the water is not monochromatic. Instead, it has lights of many different wavelengths. As the waves in the water go up and down, the angle at which the light hits the thin film changes, and the thickness of the thin film probably changes as well, causing the colors to change.
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1.
Cerise | April 20, 2010 at 12:05 am
Oho, was this the famous HAPPY (AP)USH PEARL HARBOUR TRIP?? 8D
2.
hao | April 20, 2010 at 6:40 am
For her, it was just USH as she wimped out last year during registration
3.
Cerise | April 20, 2010 at 7:44 pm
What is the meaning of this travesty?? D8
4.
yunyun | April 21, 2010 at 3:56 pm
i think i scared her out of apush cuz i said ush was tough. ^_^
that air-oil interface looks like a gem of contemporary art.